This Time
by Clouded Horizon
Summary: So after graduation, I said goodbye to my family, took out all my savings and left town in search of a girl no one believed existed... Sometimes things don't go from bad to worse, after all. All Sam Guillero needs to do is convince Max that's true. R&R!


Another MR oneshot, unrelated to Recovery, and a lot happier, hopefully. :) AU from sort of the end of the second book, but Dr Martinez is still Max's mother. I don't own any of the characters or the poem at the end. Please do take the time to read and review, I'd love to know what you thought.

This Time

-Sam Guillero, Saturday 12th, California-

Slatted beams of sunlight filter through the half-open blind and fall across my face, waking me slowly. I open sleep-encrusted eyes and squint into the daylight, watching golden dust motes swirl in the heavy air. It must be ten at least. I haven't slept this deeply in a long time, and I feel better for it.

Max is curled beside me, the fast flutter of her pulse thrumming against my skin. I turn into the curve of her body and breathe in the smell of her, content.

Then she stirs, and sits up, pushing her blonde hair – streaked with brilliant gold from the strips of light – back from her face. Her body blocks the light and I can see her silhouetted against it, the outline of half-folded wings moving slightly as she breathes.

"Max, honey…" I raise myself up on one elbow, and almost subconsciously reach out a hand to trace the shape of the wing muscles on her back. My wife turns her head to smile sleepily at me and leans across, kissing my cheek.

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah." She grins at the surprise in my voice, and I lie back, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that sprawl across the ceiling above our bed. Max's brothers and sisters – I've never been able to get used to calling them a flock – insisted on sticking them there back when we first bought the house. She can't decide whether she likes them or not. Something about reminding her of when they were on the run, back when they were kids, before I knew her.

"Well, I'm glad." Max gets up and slips on a thin dressing gown. Her eyes are dancing as she looks at me. "You're no fun when you've been awake half the night, Sam. Make sleeping in a habit, will you?"

"Anything to make you happy," I toss out flippantly, then she catches my eye and I smile, meaning the words.

"Coffee?" she asks, pushing aside the bead curtain that's been standing in for a door since the hinges on the old one finally gave out.

"Sure. I'll be down in a minute."

As she goes out, I feel a twinge of anxiety, a conditioned response from the time when letting Max out of my sight meant I might have to start looking for her all over again. It's getting weaker though, thankfully. We've been together for four years now, married for one.

I let my mind wander back to when I first started looking for her. I was eighteen and desperate to get out of my parents' house, with an average high school record and no plans for college. I had one thing I wanted to do; find this girl I'd dated once, four years before, and somehow convince her to forgive me for whatever I'd done. Of course, that was Max. It had always been her.

* * *

It wasn't just the fact she'd made what might be called a dramatic exit from my life – flying, actually _flying_, away from my school with her brothers and sisters while being shot at by some psychopaths who seemed to include the principal – or what I'd heard about her later. Max and the flock had turned up in the news frequently after she ran away from me screaming. For about six, eight months, anyway; after that they seemed to just filter out of the news, nothing new coming up about them, the world convincing itself the kids with wings had been some kind of hoax.

But I knew. I'd talked to her, I'd _kissed _her, and I knew from the day she left I wanted to see her again.

So the summer after graduation, I said goodbye to my family, took out all my savings and left town in search of a girl no one believed actually existed. I had a few leads from all the research I'd done into the 'bird-children hoax'. I followed them, paying my way around the country with temporary jobs, and most of the time I got nowhere.

After eighteen months on the road, I managed to track down one Ella Martinez, a student at Princeton College. Some guy had posted a blog, 'the day I saw a bird kid', talking about how when he was fifteen he'd seen someone dive from the sky to rescue a girl in his class from a gang of thugs. He'd been about to go to help her – I was sceptical when I read that, but go figure – but the bird kid had got there first. She'd been a girl, he thought. So I looked into the guy, managed to find out where he'd lived and the school he'd been to. I caught the next coach to Arizona and poked around till I got an ID on the girl. I was at Princeton by the end of the month.

I didn't know what connection Ella Martinez had to Max, if any, but she was the best lead I had. So I spent a month in the city, hiring on every morning at a building site to earn some cash, and soon worked out where the students went on the weekends. I introduced myself to Ella at a bar she and her friends often went to, and it kind of went from there.

Course, Ella wasn't exactly eager to talk to me once she found out what I really wanted to know. She was immediately suspicious, which gave me the clue I needed to tease out the fact she was close to Max, and probably knew where she was now. After that I practically stalked Ella, trying desperately to persuade her I was trustworthy. One day I'd convinced her to come for coffee in my lunch break, and five minutes before I was due to go back she slammed her hands down suddenly on the table and looked me in the eye.

"Okay, Sam," she said, and there was steel in her voice I hadn't heard before. "I'll tell you where to look for the flock. But I want you to know, if you hurt my sister in _any way_, I have friends who can track you down and make you wish you'd never met me."

Floored by the word _sister_ – now that I looked, Ella did look more like Max than any of her siblings at school ever had – and by her uncharacteristic threat, I nodded incredulously. "Ella – thanks. I won't forget this."

"You better not," was her wry reply. We sat there for a minute, and then Ella leaned in and spoke quietly. "They're living somewhere outside Sacramento, I'm not entirely sure where. Probably somewhere out of the way, you know?"

"Yeah." On impulse I took her hands across the table. "You don't know how much this means to me, Ella. Thank you."

A blush spread up her neck, staining her cheeks, and she pulled her hands away quickly. She got up to leave and awkwardly I did the same, not really knowing what to say.

Ella smiled ruefully. "I – well, I hope you find her, Sam. She deserves a guy who'd do all this for her." I wondered if I was imagining the tinge of bitterness in her voice.

"Maybe I'll be back in town some time. I could look you up."

"I guess. Don't know how much longer I'll be at Princeton for, though. Anyway. Have a good trip." She turned and left the café without another word.

* * *

Once in Sacramento, I did some research on houses out in the mountains, bought some hiking gear and set out to track the bird kids down. It took me weeks and brought me to the very end of my money, but by early April I'd found a place I thought had to be it. I could have retreated, thought about how to approach Max after nearly six years, but by then money wasn't the only thing I was in short supply of. I marched straight up to the front door of the house and knocked.

Half a minute later it was opened by a pretty black girl who looked a couple years younger than me. "Hello?" she said questioningly, and I suddenly recognised her as Max's younger adopted sister. The one with the weird name. Crystal, was it? My heart almost stopped as I realised I'd got the right house. _I'd found them_.

"Um – I'm –" I'd been trying to get this point for so long, I didn't know what to do or say. "Is Max around?" I settled for lamely.

The girl's forehead creased with suspicion and she closed the door a little way. "Who is it that wants to know?"

"I'm – Sam. Sam Guillero. I knew Max back in Virginia – uh, at middle school? You were in sixth grade for a couple months."

I watched that sink in, watched her eyes widen as she remembered me. "Oh – Sam! You and Max went out that time, right? Wow, it seems ages ago now. I guess you want to see her? I mean, I think she's in, she might have gone to the store with Ig –"

"Nudge, who's at the door?" a familiar voice shouted down the stairs I could see in the hallway. My stomach knotted the way it had when I'd asked her out all those years ago.

"Um, Max, you'd better come down," Nudge called back, grinning quickly at me and gesturing for me to step inside. The stair creaked, and there she was, looking confused, anxious and annoyed in equal measure, staring at me with no recognition at all.

"Hey, Max," I said hesitantly. "It's me – Sam, remember?"

Then she did recognise me, and that was worse, because her expression creased with something like fear and she retreated a couple steps up the stairs. "What are _you _doing here? Nudge, get away from him!"

I remembered Max pushing past me, yelling that she couldn't trust anyone. "No – you don't understand," I gabbled desperately. "I don't want to hurt you, I never did. I just – I wanted to see you again. I don't know what I did back in middle school but I'm sorry for whatever it was, and I'd really, really like to just talk for a bit, catch up, you know?"

Her face – more beautiful than I remembered, if that was possible – was white with shock. "Get out," she said. "And don't come back!" She ran down the stairs, grabbed Nudge and dragged her to the back of the house. I shouted "No, don't!" and followed, but in the next second I heard the crash of a slammed door and saw out of the house's back window the two winged girls speeding away into the late afternoon sky.

* * *

I could have given up right then and there. I felt like it. But I kept going, kept looking, and soon I'd tracked her down again. That second time Max heard me out for a few more seconds – before she bailed.

It happened a few times more, and on each slightly longer occasion I tried to explain to Max why it was I'd come looking for her when we'd only known each other for a few weeks back when we were fourteen. Seven months after I'd left Ella in Princeton, Max had reluctantly agreed to meet me in a park in downtown Kansas City.

"So you've been looking for me since you graduated," Max summarised what I'd told her, looking dubious.

"Yeah, pretty much. I just – I don't know." I've never been that good with words. "I didn't know why you were so angry with me when you left. I wanted – to say sorry, for whatever it was. And I wanted to see you again. You were special, different to all the girls I'd ever met – do you understand?"

My stomach lurched as she met my gaze squarely. Her mouth quirked up in a brief smile. "I don't know whether to be flattered or freaked out."

"Flattered was kind of what I was going for," I muttered.

"Yeah. I guessed that one."

After that time she didn't run away – well, not much, and never for long. I slowly managed to convince her I wasn't going anywhere. Over the next months I made friends with her younger siblings, and reached a kind of truce with her blind brother Iggy. He was kind of protective at first, but the first time Max got wind of that she smacked him upside the head and told him she could spend time with who she liked.

"Oh well, if it's _that_ way," he grumbled, rubbing his head and sauntering out. "Two months ago he was an Eraser; don't know how you expect me to keep up…"

That was how I found out why Max had left me in the dust that day six years before. "I was – well, paranoid, back then," she admitted, actually blushing a bit. "There were these wolf-human things after us – Erasers, we called them. I thought…" She coughed. "I thought for a second you were one of them. Stupid, I know."

I didn't really know what to say to that. But I felt kind of relieved that it hadn't been anything I'd done.

"Listen, Sam," Max started again, with the air of working up to something. "There's stuff I need to tell you. About how me and the flock grew up, why we left…"

"I'm listening."

Afterwards, shell-shocked, all I could say was "Wow." Then, "Thanks for telling me. That was brave."

Then I forgot all about it, because the next second Max had slipped her hand into mine.

We mostly maintained a tacit silence on the subject of wings until the day I kissed her for the second time. Then she stepped back, extended them a little way, and asked me in a quieter voice than I'd ever heard her speak in, "This is what you want, right, Sam?"

"Max –" I couldn't believe she still didn't get it. "I know what I want. I've known it since I was fourteen. I want to be with you. I mean – as if I'd care about, about _wings_."

I surprised myself saying it, and I think I surprised her, too. Then she kissed me. After that, it became impractical to ignore the subject of wings.

* * *

It was a while until I had the courage to ask about her other 'brother', Nick. He wasn't around, and none of the family – _flock_ – ever talked about him. I think I knew, somehow, that if I asked the answer wouldn't be good. Being me, I eventually asked anyway.

"Oh," was Max's first reaction, strangely neutral. "Fang, you mean."

"Um, yeah," was all I could come up with. I'd been back in Max's life for almost a year at this point, and I was still piecing things together.

Max was silent for a while, fiddling with the braid her sister Angel, now almost twelve, had put in her hair the day before. Then, "Fang. Well, I loved him. And now he's gone. And that's all there really is to say about that."

* * *

One time, when Max was still trying to explain what had driven her back in those early days, she told me it was hard for her to stop thinking she was meant to save the world. "It was all a lie, I get that in my head. Jeb and Anne, they were deluded. They thought they were heroes but they were only crazy scientists with a superiority complex and a lot of money. So why can't I live normally?" She was in one of her frustrated moods, still fighting the world, herself, and me. "Sam, I always thought I was supposed to save everyone. Turns out there's nothing I can do but recycle and vote. What everyone else does. It's difficult to make myself believe it. Do you know what I mean?"

"Not really," I admitted, and interlaced her fingers with mine. "But I know this is where we're both meant to be. Give yourself time."

I'm not sure how it came, or when, but Max did manage to put the past away. The passing months and years saw our lives entwine like two threads being spun together. It wasn't dramatic or easily defined; it was simple and gradual and as natural as breathing.

We got married in the summertime, at a tiny San Francisco church with barely thirty people there – Max's brothers and sisters, her mother and Ella, a few friends and some of my family. That last was difficult, because I hadn't seen or spoken to my parents for years; when I left home to search for Max my dad had called me a waster and a lunatic, and in return I'd called him a few names I won't mention here. My mother had made a few tentative attempts at reconciliation, each of which had failed. I sent invitations without really expecting they'd respond. But on the day, there they were – my parents and my three sisters, along with two husbands, a boyfriend and my five-year-old nephew I'd never met before. Just the fact they'd turned up went a long way to healing things.

It wasn't big or formal; Nudge and Angel did manage to talk Max out of wearing jeans to the service, but neither got their wish for a puffy white dress or an elaborate sit-down dinner. I couldn't have cared less if I'd tried. All I could think about while standing in that church was how ridiculously lucky I was to have found this woman, and to know I'd never have to go looking for her again.

* * *

I get up and head downstairs, just in time to stop Max absent-mindedly ruining a good cup of coffee with the mountains of sugar she always takes and assumes I want as well. She rolls her eyes at me, and I roll mine back. We sit together at the table by the window in a comfortable silence.

"You know…" Max begins after a while. "I never thought I'd have – this, you know. A real life. Lazy mornings. You."

I raise an eyebrow. "That made sense," I tease, grinning.

She mock-slaps my hand. "You know what I mean, Sam."

And I do.

* * *

_Sometimes things don't go, after all,_

_from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel_

_faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,_

_sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well._

From 'Sometimes' by Sheenagh Pugh

* * *

A/N: So this was my attempt to do something a bit different, and give Sam back a bit of his reputation! I never thought Sam was an Eraser or anything more than a nice kid, and I've been wanting to write his story for a while. As to his character I was treading a fine line between dedication and downright stalkerishness, so I'd really appreciate any comments on how that worked out for you. :)


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